DM's Session Review

This session was a lot of fun.

First, a warm welcome to John, our newest player addition… it's great to have you aboard, and I'm personally thrilled to be gaming with you again. Also, thanks for the great session recap John, nicely done and way to step up —you'll get full journal XP for that with the next session's stuff.

Second, I had a great birthday weekend —thanks guys!

We played at my house again this time, with the addition of a bunch of nice RPG music (thanks to Rob's ingenuity last time.)

Also, thanks to Rob and Jack, we managed to prevent a potential future problem with custom crafted items (see "Notes" section below), and took some actions to correct it in the game.

The play began in the lull between combats as the party was storming the keep, and proceeded from there through the end of that quest, and into several side-quests. It was a very lucrative session, treasure-wise, for the PCs.

Once back at Rudik's Pass, they got to run into some old friends, and re-equip themselves for the battle to come.

The play ended dramatically as the party began their infiltration of the Ravannese blockade from the rear, while Sartii troops launched a surprise frontal assault.

I'd just like to say that I'm really excited about getting to this point in the campaign, which much of what has come before, has been leading up to. There's several "focal points" in the story, significant events that stand out, and this is one of them. I think you guys will really enjoy what I have in store for you, and it's only going to get better as we now have a solid group of veteran RPers and we're starting to get real familiar and skilled with the characters' personalities, our play styles, etc.

There are long-term campaign plots already designed, and currently in design, that hook the party members individually to sections of the campaign, draw upon their backstories etc, and, as I get more related to your characters and you generate more material about them, that will only continue.
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It's my job to run the game and manage the players, so, I will always award myself the average of the XP the other players got for Elik. If I'm running it and managing well, everyone should do well, so I will too…

I mentioned an incorrect XP gain near the end of the session, sorry about that — we were all exhausted and bad at math. The base quest XP was actually 3250, as described above.

Anyone who has a question about their current total XP, see the email I sent out to the group on May 7th ("Re: Warj'Arune: The Eve of War - Session IV - May 16th & 17th") which has your previous totals. Then, just add the total XP award above.

Logan's bonus XP was assigned to Ug instead of Lilliana, at his request.

Joe submitted a journal entry in the middle of the session. This will count as if submitted between this session and next, since it addresses events that happened during this current session. It has been posted and linked from both his character page and the "Journals, Interludes & Such" section at the top of this session page, as normal.

A special thanks to Rob & Jack for calling out the impending problem with the custom crafted spell-effects items. Per the convo that resulted from this, we have removed them from play for now and characters were credited back their funds + crafting time. I am now in consideration about how to re-implement them (if at all). To see the relevant FAQ entry, Click Here.

I need to come up with a couple alternate Single-Class Paragon abilities for Wolf Totem Barbarians (Threz), since they don't get two of the standard class abilities to which the normal Paragon bonuses apply.